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The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson

In this timeless new trilogy about love and sacrifice, a princess must find her place in a reborn world.

In a society steeped in tradition, Princess Lia’s life follows a preordained course. As First Daughter, she is expected to have the revered gift of sight—but she doesn’t—and she knows her parents are perpetrating a sham when they arrange her marriage to secure an alliance with a neighboring kingdom—to a prince she has never met.

On the morning of her wedding, Lia flees to a distant village. She settles into a new life, hopeful when two mysterious and handsome strangers arrive—and unaware that one is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. Deception abounds, and Lia finds herself on the brink of unlocking perilous secrets—even as she finds herself falling in love.

Description taken from Goodreads.

Timeless? Hah.

I wanted to like THE KISS OF DECEPTION. I really did. But I couldn’t.

One thing I got really confused about was Lia. From all the things I read about her and all the recommendations blogger and IRL friends sent my way, I thought I would love Lia.

(I try not to use “bad” words on the blog but for the sake of proving my point, here we go).

Here’s the thing. The book blogosphere is mainly composed of 15 to 20-something year old girls. The word “badass” gets used to describe girls A LOT in YA, and THE KISS OF DECEPTION was no exception. To me, Lia wasn’t badass. She was irritating, selfish, stubborn and stupid. That’s not what badass is. To me, badass is being tough, knowing when to hold your ground and not taking crap. Things like knowing when to back down? Knowing when you’re wrong? Acknowledging when you’re wrong? Knowing when things, painful things, have to happen for the greater good? Those things come with being mature and brave and strong and smart, which are all things we, as readers, also want a book’s main character to be.

Lia was none of those things.

For example, the first thing that made me dislike her happens in the very beginning–so this won’t be a spoiler. Lia is going to be engaged to the prince of a neighboring kingdom in order to strengthen and unite both nations. I can understand being upset about something like this. It sucks. The fact that people were and are still forced into marriage today sucks even more. However, throughout history, many different cultures have had something like forced marriage or arranged marriage in their pasts. Lia’s definitely not the first person this has happened to, and she’s the princess. Sacrifices have to be made for the good of others, especially when it comes to being a ruler or even just a leader.

She knew. She knew that staying would benefit the entire kingdom and countless other people in the neighboring kingdom. Oh yes, and did I mention she’s never seen the guy before but she only takes time to assume that he’s an ugly, gross old man? Yeah. That happens. She knew and she still ran away.

The other major thing that annoyed me was the love triangle. Love triangles are not always terrible, and I’m not opposed to them–but I’m definitely, MAJORLY opposed to bad love triangles. This was a bad love triangle. The love triangle in this book is a paperweight. There’s just so much about it that is forced. I don’t really believe Lia loves either of them. It weighs down the book so heavily it messed up the entire second half of the story for me, which leads me to the second part of this love triangle issue.

So the guys.

Kiss of Deception? More like Kiss and Don’t Tell The Princess Who We Actually Are, because that’s just about it. I loved the way both characters were so different and I really liked learning about the assassin, but the prince just irritated me and once the love triangle developed, my enjoyment of the assassin slowly crumbled.

If you enjoy love triangles and don’t mind the characters, I think you should try this book–especially if the blurb interests you. I just couldn’t bring myself to accept a lot of the different aspects of this story, which is disappointing because just about all my friends enjoyed it. The writing here is beautiful and there’s more than a handful of quotes to highlight. The plot is well-done, other than the fact that the pacing is slow. Overall, I would recommend it–it just wasn’t for me. 2.5 stars.

I'm a book blogger at the The Silver Words and a former blogger at Tweens Read Too. Fantasy is my first love, but I'm also coming to enjoy a lot of contemporary and classic lit. When I'm not blogging, you can find me reading, writing, coding, studying, swimming and skiing. Ice cream is love; the puns are always intended. Find me on Twitter @thesilverwords

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The Silver Words is a book review blog that will sometimes receives advance copies of books from publishers/authors/authorized distributers in exchange for honest reviews. These opinions are my own and the books I receive in no way affect my reviews. Any use of my work is prohibited unless my permission has been granted and/or proper credit has been given. More information about licensing is provided on the About page. Thank you for reading and enjoying The Silver Words.